Back in Raleigh
Got back in this morning at 8am. I had an outdated version of the CalTrain schedule and coupled with delays with the airport shuttle, I thought I might miss the flight. Didn’t sleep at all on the red-eye to Atlanta. I was playing the in-flight trivia game and the woman next to me joined in and we started chatting. She is a speech pathologist/therapist, recently got her Master’s. Her husband has a PhD in photonics. We talked the whole time, a lot about the kinds of kids she helps and the illnesses they face: cerebral palsy, autism, etc. It’s truly remarkable what those kids have to go through…it’s humbling. I talked a bit about some of the neuroscience/neuroengineering research I learned about this quarter, and we discussed some possible treatments that would be helpful. She and her husband (who is French) did some traveling in Europe so we talked about that too. About 40 minutes from Atlanta the guy next to me (wearing an Obama button) woke up and asked me what residence I lived in. Turns out he is a rising senior in American studies at Stanford who is running for Student Body President. He has chosen an awfully mature topic as one of the key planks to his platform: mental health of graduate students. Nice guy, he has my vote.
So we’ll be heading down to Charleston for a few days, then I’ll have two more days in the Triangle before heading back to California.
